Stop & Shop
Opened: 2011
It's time for a look at one of the smallest Stop & Shop stores out there! The store measures just around 18,000 square feet, although there may be additional space on the second floor or in the basement for backrooms, storage, offices, and the like. It dates back to the early 1930s when the space was constructed as a theater, then by the 1940s or 50s, it had become an ACME. Here's an awesome 1958 picture of the ACME, and you can read through the comments for more details there. By the 1980s, it became a Foodtown owned by the Norkus family, and ultimately, became a Stop & Shop in 2011 when they acquired Norkus Foodtown. Since the conversion was pretty recent, you can actually see a picture of the store as a Foodtown via Google Maps street view. Stop & Shop didn't do much inside or outside, but they did change over the decor inside to a very simple version of their yellow and purple decor package.
Stop & Shop maintains (and recently renovated) a store in Point Pleasant, on the mainland, but Point Pleasant Beach is its own municipality separated from Point Pleasant by a canal and the Manasquan River. The Point Pleasant store is the next-closest supermarket to this one, but is about two and a half miles west.
Directly across the street from this store is Joe Leone's, a beautiful Italian specialty market (but it's not a full supermarket -- it has a deli and bakery, lots of prepared foods, and some specialty foods but not a full line of groceries. A tiny Mexican store next door also is far from being a supermarket, at just a couple hundred square feet.
Opened: 2011
Owner: Ahold Delhaize
Previous Tenants: ACME Markets > Norkus Foodtown (closed 2011)
Cooperative: none
Location: 505 Richmond Ave, Point Pleasant Beach, NJ
Photographed: December 22, 2021
Closing Date: October 31, 2024
Facebook has the usual unhelpful range of suggestions of what a local resident definitely heard was coming in (Trader Joe's? Back to Foodtown? Food Bazaar? ACME again? Wegmans?) but it does appear -- although I could be wrong about this -- that a member of the Norkus family still owns the property, meaning the most likely potential future tenant could be another Norkus-owned store. One comment, which I can't find at the moment, claims the mayor has said there will be a new supermarket coming in but that they can't identify the name yet. At this point, who knows -- we'll just have to wait and see! And with that, that wraps up our look at the closing Stop & Shop stores! Here's a rundown of the other things we've seen this weekend:
On the one hand, I'm surprised anyone in the Norkus family would want back in. On the other, if they still own the property, why not?
ReplyDeleteI feel like it's a good size for Grocery Outlet, but I think this location only works for a traditional grocer. All the money to be made in Pt Pleasant Beack is from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and the summer crowd is looking for a full supermarket.
Or maybe Max's Liquors?
DeleteSeveral posts on Facebook now suggest ACME will renovate the store and then reopen it in a few months. I have no idea if that's true and can't find any source that might confirm it. So we'll have to wait and see.
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